Favorite films

Pinned reviews

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  Con Air 1997

  ★★★★ Watched 28 Jul 2019

  A poignant sequel to Raising Arizona, in which Ed finally is able to conceive, but H.I.'s lawbreaking habits get him into worse trouble than ever before and he has to fight to see the child he never thought he'd have.

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  Cats 2019

  Watched 29 Dec 2019

  I could not ask for more from this shot in the dark.
  Take a look at this thing, whether sober or stoned!
  You can say that it bites, but it will leave a mark.
  There was talk of a blockbuster. Who could have known?

  Oh the criticals scar, and the criticals boo
  Criticals boo as criticals should
  Criticals should, so criticals pan
  Criticals pan and criticals boo.

  On arrival it's dead, yet it lives--it's in heat!
  Such immense talent spent…

Recent reviews

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  Persepolis 2007

  ★★★★ Watched 19 Mar 2025 1

  Just this once I'm going to pass over the obvious contemporary resonance of a story that involves one's country being rendered unrecognizable overnight by bloodthirsty fanatics. Instead I'll just say that, so many years after its original theatrical run, after time and sometimes cruel fortune have taken many of my family members, I really appreciate how Persepolis is such a loving tribute to Marjane Satrapi's family. It's her memoir, of course, and as depicted she is a relatable, compelling protagonist,…

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  Night Is Not Eternal 2024

  ★★★½ Watched 18 Mar 2025

  A bit messy, given that it covers close to a decade, but that does allow it to touch on a wider range of topics under the umbrella of 'how do ordinary citizens resist authoritarianism?' The throughline is Cuban democracy activist Rosa María Payá, and the many questions big and small she faces as she steps out of the shadow of her martyred father Oswaldo Payá and becomes a movement leader in her own right: stay or flee? How do you…

Popular reviews

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  Wish 2023

  ★ Watched 27 Nov 2023 1

  For the first 30 minutes of this I wondered about the responses I'd been hearing, that it was some ungodly, uncanny simulacrum of a Disney film. Sure its central conceit of a kingdom where wishes are kept and only occasionally granted is labored and unintuitive; yes, the animation splits the difference between Pixarian photorealism and post-Spiderverse stylization and gets the worst of both worlds, reducing the detail to the textures and models while illuminating them with unflattering physically-based lighting and…

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  The Parallax View 1974

  ★★★★★ Watched 17 Mar 2025

  Conspiracy theories have become a lot less appealing of late, both for the people who traffic in them and because the reality of American life has become so stupid and obvious as to make dark speculation redundant. A paranoid thriller like Alan Pakula's The Parallax View should feel passé, a relic of the time when cynicism about government still felt novel and not the T-pose of digital discourse. But it is so good at conveying the shock and disbelief and…